WASHINGTON (Aug. 17, 2006)–Contestants from Turkey and Hungary are the winners in the National Geographic Society’s first global photography contest, conducted in partnership with 16 local-language editions of the Society’s flagship magazine. Erdal Kinaci of Turkey won in the People category; Daniel Nemeth of Hungary won in the
Travel/Culture category; Milan Radisics, also of Hungary, won in the Natural World category.

The three winning images were chosen from a pool of nearly 40,000 entries from the participating countries. Each country held national contests, and in the final round, sent one photo from each of the three categories to the Society’s Washington headquarters.

The grand-prize winners will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to National Geographic headquarters.

The participating nations were Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. The competition was open to all National Geographic magazine readers in those nations, professional and amateur.

National Geographic is synonymous with unparalleled photographic excellence. The magazine draws on the best photographers around the world and devotes more resources to photography than any other general-interest magazine. Since the 1890s, National Geographic photographers have captured images of places where readers could not go themselves: places too far, too deep, too dark, too dangerous.
Recent advances in photographic technology have illuminated and captured much of the previously unknown. Through the lenses of National Geographic photographers, readers have been able to view unique life forms on the ocean floor, visit sunken ships, explore Egyptian tombs, “see” the temperature ranges of a star, discover the hidden world inside our bodies, observe the microscopic world of molecules and subatomic particles, and savor the perfect structure of a snowflake.

Today, National Geographic’s photographic archive contains 10.5 million images; a majority of these are available for publishing, advertising and other commercial uses. National Geographic offers photography workshops and photography expeditions and publishes photography field guides as well as signature coffee-table photo books.

The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society today works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 350 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and four other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; radio programs; films; books; videos and DVDs; maps; and interactive media. National Geographic has funded more than 8,000 scientific research projects and supports an education program combating geographic illiteracy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com.